Georgetown McDonough School of Business

Georgetown McDonough MBA Interview

“Treat the interview like a job interview. This includes wearing a suit and bringing an up-to-date copy of your résumé. Candidates should practice interviewing with someone they trust to give candid feedback and take their feedback into consideration.

Finally, a successful candidate will show their interviewer that they have prepared for the interview and will come with thoughtful questions about the program.

The interview is a great time for candidates to stand out as an applicant. Don’t be afraid to show a little bit of your personality in the interview. When candidates are stressed out or too formal, they don’t perform well in the interview and that is a real missed opportunity.”

The Georgetown McDonough MBA Interview

Frequently Asked Interview Questions

Tell me about a challenging situation at work and how you dealt with it.

Give me an example of a time where you managed another individual.

How is the extent of your community/volunteering involvement?

What attracts you to Georgetown?

Describe your experience working in Asia vs. US

Describe a time when you were met with a conflict with a coworker. how did you resolve it?

How would your market yourself to an employer? (strengths) What gaps would the employer see? (weaknesses)

Describe your workday/job function.

Interview Transcript - 1

My interviewer was a second year student. He took down notes on his laptop and highlighted sentences on my resume, as we spoke.

He briefly described his background and then began the interview:

Tell me about your background and current position.

Why an MBA? Why now?

Short term and long term goals post MBA? And why?

How do you keep yourself informed about the healthcare industry? What references do you use?

Tell me what you’ve read lately on the current market in the healthcare industry

What are 3 of your strengths?

What would your coworkers describe as 3 of your strengths?

Constructive criticism given to you?

Tell me about a situation where you had a cultural shock.

Tell me about a situation where you faced a problem with a co-worker. How did you resolve it?

Do you have any barriers that prevent you from joining Georgetown?

What do you think you need to learn more about to reach your post MBA goals? How do you plan to do it?

Why McDonough?

He ended the interview promptly after 30 minutes so I was only able to ask him 2 questions. But he not just answered my questions but also gave me good advice.

The interview was conversational and the interviewer having had prior experience working with a healthcare company was keen to know more details about my background and why I want to pursue an MBA. He had follow up questions for most parts of the interview. Overall it was an enjoyable interview.

Interview Transcript - 2

The interview was taken by an Adcom member over Skype. It was a friendly and conversational interview. The interview was blind and she had not read my essays. It lasted for 30 min. Overall, the interviewer genuinely tried to know more about me.

Here are the list of questions in that order:

How do you keep yourself updated? Which publications/magazines due you follow?

What is an issue/topic of particular importance to you? Tell me about something you read recently?

Why do you want an MBA?

Talk about a time when you were part of a team and there was a conflict. How did you handle it?

Tell me about a time when you took leadership role? What were the challenges? How did you handle it? She asked further questions on the example I gave.

Talk about a time when you were challenged in a cross-cultural environment. What did you do?

My interviewer didn’t know anything about my application or even have my resume. I handed it to him right as the interview started, and he spent a few minutes reading it. The interviewer was also very focused on the clock and the 30 minute time frame. During the interview, he took notes.

Interview Transcript - 4

The interview was very casual and conversational. As others have said, the interviewer did not anything other than my resume which I provided.

Questions/topics we covered:

Walk me through your résumé

Experience working on a global team. He prefaced this question by talking about Georgetown’s global focus.

Frequently asked Situational and Behavioural interview questions

Interview Transcript - 5

The interview lasted for about 23 minutes, post which I was allowed to ask questions. Overall it was a 30 min interview. The interviewer did not have anything except my CV.

Questions asked:

1.) Tell me about your current work.

2.) Tell me about a leadership experience.

3.) How do you update yourself with world affairs? What news are you following ardently right now?

4.) Tell me about a team experience when you faced a conflict

5.) What was the most constructive feedback you ever received?

6.) A time when you disagreed with your peers. What was the outcome? What did you learn?

7.) I have your CV with me. What achievement from your CV are you most proud?

Next, I asked few questions and got really insightful answers.

Interview Transcript - 6

The interview was very conversational. We step by step walked through my résumé. The questions were as follows:

Why you choose your school and about your college experience.

What I do in my currently role and how I made the transition into my current role.

Why an MBA?

Why McDonough?

There were other questions dispersed throughout the conversation that were specific to responses that I gave, but this was the general flow.

Interview Transcript - 7

The interview was conversational. It started on time and lasted for 35 minutes. The interviewer started from reading my résumé.

Questions included:

Tell me about the background and why MBA.

Why now?

Leadership story.

Have been to the campus?

What schools have you applied to?

Do you want to stay in DC?

6 questions for her( 10 minutes)

During the interview, the interviewer took a lot of notes. She would also responded to my answers by stating that she had had similar experiences.

Interviewer is friendly. No challenge questions.

Interview Transcript - 8

I was interviewed by a member of Adcom who only had my résumé as reference. The conversation was prompted by the following cues/questions:

Walk me through your résumé and job trajectory thus far.

Name a time you struggled to work together with a coworker. What did you do about it?

What do you want to do with an MBA/why now?

What’s your ideal role right out of an MBA? 10 years down the road?

Why Georgetown?

Best piece of criticism or constructive advice you’ve ever received.

What would you consider your biggest strength? Opportunity for growth?

Any questions for me?

Overall very nice and easy-flowing conversation. Interviewer took the opportunity to comment on what I talked about before flowing into the next question.

Interview Transcript - 9

The interview lasted about 35 minutes. The woman was really nice, but she was asking some odd questions about where I was applying towards the end–I think trying to awkwardly gauge whether I would in fact attend Georgetown if they admitted me.

1) Walk me through your résumé.

2) Why an MBA?

3) Why Georgetown?

4) Tell me about a time you had difficulty with a team/team member, and what you did to improve that relationship.

5) What are your post-MBA goals in five years?

6) Where else are you applying?

I hesitated a little on where else I was applying, since Georgetown is a safety (in terms of ranking, though I love the school and don’t consider it a ‘safety’ by any means). Interviewer was incredibly nice though.

Interview Transcript - 10

My interview at McDonough was very relaxed and straight-forward. My interviewer was a second-year student who was very nice, though she was an international student so I felt there was a bit of a language barrier.